No, Toothpaste Isn't Actually a Cure for Saggy Boobs

In the latest example of “don’t believe everything you see online,” a handful of beauty bloggers and other YouTubers think toothpaste is the solution to sagging breasts.

One video getting a surprising amount of attention lately was posted in January by the account Editorial Naturalbeauty556. The video claims toothpaste can tighten skin and shrink pores, leading to firmer breasts that appear larger and perkier. In just five days. Other clips claim a mixture of toothpaste and Vaseline will do the trick.

Hate to break it to you, but there’s not a lot you can do to miraculously lift saggy boobs. Breasts naturally get softer and less dense as women age. Gravity is constantly pulling against their supportive tissues, no matter what bra you wear, how much you work out your chest muscles, or the position you sleep in. (Although sleeping on your back can help at least a little—as long as it doesn’t make you snore!)

Probably unsurprisingly, there’s no science backing up the toothpaste approach to bigger breasts, says Christine Greves, MD, an ob-gyn at Orlando Health Hospital in Florida. If these beauty bloggers are seeing changes in the size or perkiness of their bustline, they might be noticing a temporary lift from a new exercise routine or a new bra, she hypothesizes, but toothpaste isn’t likely behind any such effect.

Worse still, rubbing toothpaste on your boobs could be irritating. “Toothpaste was concocted for your mouth,” Dr. Greves says. Save the toothpaste for your actual teeth—unless you particularly like a minty-fresh chest. (And if you do, please test it on a patch of skin on the inside of your wrist first, to see if it triggers a strong reaction, Dr. Greves advises.)

Vaseline, on the other hand, can at least be moisturizing. And yes, your boobs do need that. “A lot of times when women complain about dry, cracked nipples, it can be related to dry skin,” Deanna Attai, MD, a breast surgeon and assistant clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, told Health in a prior interview. “I have so many patients who think to put lotion on other parts of their body, but they never think about putting it on their breasts.”